Scorching Through 1902: "The Automobile Terror"
The Year in Automobiles and Death in The New York Times

by Michael L. Bromley (copyright 2003)
Published in Automotive History Review, Summer 2003
Footnotes and graphics omitted. Email Bromley for re-print of final article.

 

The automobile scorcher is the worst enemy of the sport...

Eight miles an hour. A run, perhaps, but scarcely beyond a fast walk. A horse would call it an easy trot. A cop might hold a bicycle to this limit, but only on principle. Any self-respecting farmer would think an automobile running that slow a waste of good shot. Speed records had already exceeded a mile-a-minute and were soon to move into three digits. But in 1902 New York City, the limit to speed was eight miles an hour.

OK, so the newspapers brought accounts of priests, children, widows, and assorted pedestrians and other innocents maimed by motor cars. But not a few had limbs torn or worse from runaway and spooked horses, flipped carriages, out of control trolleys, or any hazardous combination thereof. Any given week’s dispatch in 1902 brought news of the injured, the crippled, the burned, and the dead. No big deal if it was on account of broken ice, collapsed mines, jealous husbands, malfunctioning elevators, bicycles, tornados, riots, fire, earthquakes, volcanoes, anarchists, train wrecks, malaria, at least one flying cow, or an unfortunate reenactment of William Tell’s archery skills, which cumulatively contributed to more deaths in 1902 than there were automobiles on the road.

But God forbid a motor car scare a couple horses.

Especially if the auto-terrorized animals bolted and tipped the carriage, and the thrown passenger, as one Joseph B. Hughes claimed, suffered permanent damage to his spine. Should that have happened, the owner of the motor car, in that case, banker Felix Warburg who had to pay $12,070 for the privilege of seeing Hughes’s simulated flight and other acting skills, was to be fully liable, yes or yes. Why Warburg had to pay that exact amount is unclear, but the odd seventy bucks was likely from adding up carriage repair and compensation for one of the horses which had to be shot.

Worse, should your car’s mere passing somehow result in the death of a carriage rider, as happened to chauffeur H.B. Marble, you could get a year in the can (and a one dollar fine). Marble was employed by a New York automobile maker, and all he did was try to pass the vehicle of the horse-traction variety from which the son of John Molz was thrown and later died. No matter if the collision was arguably Molz’s fault. One year, malicious chauffeur!

No wonder, then, two days after Marble was sentenced, the "hit and run" technique was employed by two automobilists who struck a pedestrian in Meriden, Connecticut, leaving the man for dead in a barn (the next day’s newspapers worried that he would not recover). No wonder, then, "the owner of a big red automobile" rode off after striking a wagon and rendering its driver unconscious. This man, said to be a "manufacturer of the machines," though chased by a mob, managed to escape. Clearly, he made a good product. He also made the front page of the New York Times.

This was great press. One can almost imagine the copy editor’s glee:

Dead and Maimed in Wake of Automobile (no crash, just a frightened horse)...

Banker’s Automobile Runs Down A Boy (as a Panhard backed up, "the lad was thrown violently to the street" )...

Two Killed in Auto’s Wild Plunge off Bridge ("possessed by ‘speed madness,’ Frank J. Mathews, a well-known real estate broker and clubman of Jersey City, ran his automobile at full speed over the Park Avenue bridge...")

Accidents, suicide, and murder generally made page two. Death by horse, train, or a fall down an elevator shaft earned page one treatment only if the spectacle or quantity of maimed was sufficiently shocking. The Times deemed automobile crashes "Fit to Print" on the front page regardless of outcome, even if everyone walked away. These headlines sold papers and generated great activity in the "letters" columns. Indignance and shock followed every automobile crash.

On the 13th of February, front and center of page one, in letters of equal size to another headline about President Roosevelt’s illness and somewhat larger than those below, "Six Dead in Kentucky Fight," "21 Injured in Erie Wreck," and "Dr. Ravold Found Guilty" (that of a quack who administered to children an antitoxin for diphtheria which resulted in thirteen fatal cases of lockjaw), rang the Times headline, "Fatal Automobile Ride: Gen. Thomas’s Son Runs Down and Kills a Child." The article continued,

Edward R. Thomas of 17 West Fifty-Seventh Street, a broker and son of Gen. Samuel Thomas, railroad President and financier, speeding his automobile with a party of friends aboard through Convent Avenue at 1:45 o’clock P.M. yesterday, ran over and instantly killed Henry Theiss, seven years old.

Great story, for not only have we the privileged son of a railroad despot, but the young man was driving an "obnoxious" machine that once belonged to the most notorious Scorcher of them all:

The machine, though now painted black, is the original ‘White Ghost,’ which, under the ownership of William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., gained much notoriety on the Long Island roads.

Although the "White Ghost" was good for eight times the speed limit, neither the Times nor onlookers were forgiving of young Thomas’s evident restraint at the wheel of the great German Daimler car:

Witnesses say the vehicle was going at forty miles an hour... Their estimates may be wrong, but it was nearly three blocks from the little crushed body lying in the avenue when its owner finally brought it to a standstill... "I’ll never ride in an automobile again as long as I live," [Thomas] exclaimed passionately.

The news excited letters to the editors, including one which questioned the manliness of Thomas for not "own[ing] up to his neglect" and another which demanded that something, something must be done:

I understand that the bill now before the Legislature will regulate the wild career of our city automobiles. Action cannot come too soon and cannot be too strictly enforced if we would not be in time as childless a city as Hamelin after the departure of the piper... Not a day passes that I do not observe these outrageous vehicles rushing along in parks or streets at a speed far in excess of what the law allows. Fines mean absolutely nothing to automobilists. We must have imprisonment. It is a little too costly to wait in such case until murder, as is told in to-day’s Times, effects a change of heart and a "swearing off."
[Signed] An Anxious Mother.

With the "White Ghost" still in mind, and following the lively news of Death by Scorching of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Fair in France, whose new 45 HP car burst a tire and landed the pair plus chauffeur into a tree, and of Nevada Senator Stewart’s wife in California due to an unfortunate encounter with a telegraph pole, on October 14 the Times declared an epidemic: "The Automobile Terror." The article recounted those and various other motor car accidents and listed twenty-four deaths so far that year.

In those days, death was not the antiseptic, unmentionable event of today. Death was very much a part of life: it was sudden, expected, and likely to come at any time to any one. Funerals were social events, and a good funeral oration was a prized political stunt and a great photo-op. Death was normal. But if death came by motor car -- especially if it blew up -- that was news, such as reported on May 18: "Girl and Man Blown Up in Automobile Explosion." This was a juicy story. Miss Emma Knoeln "probably was fatally injured" and Frank E. Logan "received burns of a most painful character" (one wonders) when, after their automobile "suddenly stopped" and Logan began to inspect the machine, it exploded and he was "blown almost across the street," while the 19-year old Miss Knoeln was "thrown into the air and landed in the street."

A motor car accident had all the elements of a good scandal: danger, vice, class envy, and money. Even better, it occasioned treasured opportunity for moral outrage. What offended the Times and its readers was not that people died from automobiles, not even so much that they died from recklessness, speeding, "fast flying," racing, and other forms of "rowdiness." No, what really burned the Times was that the motor car was an instrument of social oppression. Editorials lustfully boiled with class envy and calls for vengeance against The Scorchers:

The worthless sons of an earlier generation of rich men in this country used to manifest their high spirits and low breeding by getting drunk and becoming disorderly in public places, to the annoyance and disgust of decent people. That sort of thing was tolerated for a time, and then the police and the police courts put an end to it.... There are fifty or a hundred times as many rich men’s sons now... those among them who are cads and rowdies are justly regarded as about the least useful class of society. A good many of this class have taken to automobiles...

Dutifully reported in the Times was the Reverend Dr. George C. Lorimer, who, in a speech to the American Tract Society at a Baptist Church, railed:

The men who ride down people in automobiles are generally rich men. They are likely to be persons of cultivation, and personally their feelings toward the poor are doubtless amiable enough. But when it is a matter of interfering with their amusements the life of a poor man counts for nothing with them.

The Good Reverend Doctor Lorimer was only getting started. An eye for an eye, he challenged, for "Every life that is sacrificed in that way ought to be paid for in the electric chair," surely bringing the congregation to its righteous feet. "The Committee of Fifty" was formed to garner public petitions for new speed laws. Responses to the 30,000 surveys distributed by the Committee included a few gems such as "I was nearly killed by an auto yesterday, and hereafter I shall carry a gun. Nothing but a bullet could have caught this one," or, "Is there no limit to aggressions of public safety?" and, "Has there been a single owner imprisoned?"

Legislatures reacted in kind. Speed limits, penalties, licenses, taxes, and other overreactions censured the automobile. Police were instructed to nail every Scorcher, and magistrates and sheriffs across the land treated speed enforcement as a display of virility. The domineering and mean "Southern Sheriff" of 1970's films had nothing on the 1902 Mayor of Winnetka, Illinois. This Chicago-area local chief gave literal meaning to the "speed trap":

... it is stated that the Mayor had a rope stretched across the road where the automobiles are in the habit of testing their speed and guards with stop watches stationed a distance each way from it, and that whenever an automobile comes along, trying to break the record, the guard signals and the rope is drawn tight. This compels the automobilist to stop or have his machine raked fore and aft by the rope. Policemen are on hand to arrest him. The first afternoon three autos were caught in this way, and the Mayor promises to continue the same method until automobile speeding is stopped in that locality.

Back in New York, another traffic cop technique was launched, the unmarked bicycle:

Three chauffeurs, driving huge racing automobiles, were arrested on Pehlam Avenue on Saturday afternoon for racing their machines faster than the law allows... Inspector Cross has issued orders to all bicycle policemen in the Bronx to wear citizen’s clothes. While in the uniform the bicycle policemen were kept to the jump all the time trying to catch offenders, who seemed to take delight in braving the police.

The great American inventor joined in with ideas and contraptions to stop the Scorchers. Minneapolis resident, E. J. Hodgson, the Times reported, "has invented a speed register for automobiles, the use of which, if required by city governments, may solve the problem of keeping the ‘devils’ within the bounds as to speed." A huge "speed register" was to be mounted on the side of a motor car so that pedestrians and policemen could know at a glance its speed. The Times’ own automotive journalist later noted that Mr. Hodgson’s contraption "is not likely to be in voluntary demand among automobilists generally." One wonders if other, more pointed observations weren’t deleted by the editors.

Motorists, dear reader, were undaunted, some indignantly so, such as the sage and imminently reasonable Mr. W.J. Morgan, who called the Times on its blatant distortions. The distinguished Mr. Morgan spanked the paper:

It has been with some amazement and regret that I have noticed not only the letters that have appeared in the Times denouncing automobilists and automobiles, but your editorial attitude as well. A good many of us read the Times as a corrective and safeguard, fleeing to it for safety from the biased and sensational newspaper, therefore it is with more than regret that I have noticed that the Times has acted as chief huntsman to the howling mob that has assailed automobilists so intemperately and unreasonably the past few weeks in your columns.

Mr. Morgan noted that a recent stoning of a motor car was one of "the fruits of the Anarchistical utterances" in the newspaper. He correctly related the public hysteria over motor cars to a similar reaction to the earlier bicycle craze, while pointing out that the motor car had already yielded far more public benefit than the bicycle ever would. Modern animal-rightists would be compelled to agreement with Mr. Morgan that the automobile was a savior to the "beast of burden." Could even the most unrepentant Luddite argue against Mr. Morgan’s sentiment that,

I never look at a poor struggling and straining team in our inferior downtown streets but that I feel thankful for the advent of the automobile?

(Without the horse, nor would Mr. Morgan have any longer to look downward upon city streets to avoid stepping on its noxious exhaust).

Others took the law into their own hands. Quite literally. Mr. Benjamin B. Tilt, "a silk manufacturer," and Mr. Frank W. Duryea, "a broker," were Committed Scorchers. Policeman Neal saw them coming down Seventh Avenue at 135th street without headlights, "sounding the horn incessantly... at a tremendous pace." Although it is not explained how Officer Neal managed to catch up to the pair (probably on a bicycle), six blocks later when they had "slowed up," Neal jumped in the car and instructed "his prisoners" to drive directly to the station. The news article describes the next instance, when these brave pioneers gave back:

As they reached Eighth Avenue, one said to the other: "Let’s give the cop a ride." The words were no sooner spoken than the machine turned south, and in another instant was rushing down Eighth Avenue at the top of its speed. Neal tried to grab the levers, but they told him to stop, or he would blow the machine up, and all its passengers along with it. So he kept his police whistle blowing, sat still, and watched his comrades split the wind until they reached Ninety-eighth Street on Central Park West.

"Stop this damned machine and I’ll let you go!" he then exclaimed. Laughing, they shut off the power and applied the brakes. One block further down the auto stopped, and immediately five policemen leaped into it.

Tilt was freed on $500 bail, while Duryea was fined five dollars for "interfering with the police." Undaunted, "the two men left the court together, saying that now they would make a trip to West Point, and would run the machine in faster time than that they were making when they were arrested." Officer Neal’s desperate promise was left due.

The coveted labels of "cads" and "rowdies" were earned by a group of six riders of "a low, heavy racing machine," spotted by Bicycle Policeman Gillis going down Central Park West at a speed that Gillis knew to be "far in excess of that allowed by law." When Gillis called out, "the chauffeur gave a glance over his shoulder... and let his machine out a peg... [Gillis] shouted to the occupants to stop, but their only answer was something like a shout, which floated back to the pursuer." At the speed Gillis said to be twenty-five miles an hour, his bicycle hit a piece of wood and the officer was thrown ten feet in the air. At the sight of this, "the occupants of the automobile... gave a cheer" and were away. Police were looking for a "low, long racing automobile capable of seating six persons."

Not even Edward R. Thomas could be kept down for long. Within weeks of slaughtering the child with the "White Ghost," Thomas was back at it, this time in an "immense red automobile." This time Thomas was the victim. As he motored down 44th Street with his wife, brother-in-law, and chauffeur, "a mob of one hundred boys" attacked:

Tin cans, boilers, pails, stones, and sticks were hurled at the occupants of the vehicle, while the boys yelled themselves hoarse as they surrounded the machine, which had been damaged by one of the gang throwing a boiler between the wheels and brought it to a stop... Mrs. Thomas was struck in the head with the lid of a boiler and rendered unconscious. Even then, however, the gang did not desist, but kept up the fusillade and showered the party with everything they could lay their hands on.

As Thomas shielded his wife, the chauffeur, Mr. Otter, bravely fending off the continued blows, somehow dislodged the obstruction and drove off, the attackers in pursuit until a policeman scared them away. This brave sacrifice to the sport by the Thomas party was noted by Mr. Morgan in his defense of automobilists. Thomas avenged the disgrace and went on to further glory on August 16 of that year by running his "120 horsepower Hotchkiss racer" into a carriage that carried two women and landed himself into a cast, with a fractured leg and facing jail time.

Throughout the year of 1902, Scorching remained a hot item for the newspapers, legislatures, city councils, and automobile clubs and journals who decried the practice and declared it "ungentlemanly." To the modern reader, conspicuously absent from accounts of motor car tragedies is mention of alcohol. Perhaps it just was, so it went unnoticed, unless, of course, it was taken away, as happened in Southampton, New York, which prohibited the sale of alcohol the year before. "...members of the Meadow Brook Country Club had to bring their own liquor and wines, and it was not an infrequent spectacle to see several men who liked their afternoon refreshment going to the club with a bottle under each arm." Like the Scorchers, dedicated drinkers wouldn’t let the law get in the way of a good time.

On the road, arrests were made, especially during the summer months when New Yorkers rode about New Jersey, Long Island, Newport and Bar Harbor in their new and ever faster motors. Magistrates smelled gold. Hired chauffeurs, as usual, took the brunt of the legal consequence, some ending up in jail. We’ll assume that owners regularly posted bail for the drivers, though not always. At least not in the case of the chauffeur to Frederick C. Havemeyer, Edmond Fromont.

While Mr. Havemeyer was hunting in Colorado, the chauffeur, who was imported from France along with the "big Fournier automobile," wanted to show off. He took a group of friends, including "two young women," on a ride and was stopped for doing twenty miles an hour, more than double the limit. Mr. Fromont was tossed in jail. The news account noted that the chauffeur "said that Mr. Havemeyer did not know that he had taken the machine out, and seemed to fear that his employer would learn of it." This vile, thrilling chauffeur’s practice came to be known as the "joy ride" and a few years later replaced Scorching as the object of automotive outrage in the Times.

By 1909, when William Howard Taft came to power in Washington, Scorching had become a part of life, no less rued but not as shocking as in 1902. The huge play by the press against Scorching had numbed the public, and its less pleasant results were now likely to be found on page two. After an ugly battle in Congress, Taft brought automobiles to the White House, a motoring triumph. The winning argument was that it would be a cruelty to animals should the hefty President ride a horse.

Taft was a fine Scorcher who loved the rush of the wind and the blur of the scenery from the back of his beloved White steamer, a great machine capable of a mile a minute. Taft freely joked of his "joy rides" and called the open country tour "atmospheric champagne." He made news for hitting 56 mph on a race track in Atlanta. Despite deferential sidesteps by the press, Taft’s speed disease was well known. The Times, of course, let it out, ever so unsubtly: "Reports from the capital have it that our Chief Executive is fond of speeding, but it would be lese majeste to say that he does not regard the speed laws," lèse majesté, being, apparently, the reporter’s specialty. Taft’s Aide-de-Camp, Captain Archie Butt, and head of security, Secret Service man Jimmy "Doc" Sloan, were unable to contain the President’s lust for speed.

Taft gave important presidential approval to the motor car, which had been shunned by his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. When, in 1910 Taft’s son crushed a road worker, an Italian immigrant, the President worried about the political fallout. There was none. The country had come to accept "The Automobile Terror."

The forward-thinking nation chose the immeasurable benefits of the motor car despite its dangers. Besides, the Scorchers would not be restrained. While the more dedicated automobile demons such as the great Roscoe Turner and Eddie Rickenbacker sought higher speeds in flying machines, racers, tinkerers, gangsters, and every other sort of road burner laid the path to destruction, rum running, NASCAR, and high insurance rates that would follow over the decades. If the editors at 43rd Street only knew back then: 1902 was just a beginning.

- Michael L. Bromley, 2003